Photography
My photography
I use photography to show something about where I’ve been or people whom I’ve met. As well as trying to see the beauty in a scene or situation, I’m also trying to convey ideas and feelings. My photography is about me and what I do, who I meet and where I go. All my photography tries to be contemporary and creative. I’m resistant to being fitted in to a taxonomy by categorisation such as “travel” or “conceptual” or “nature”. All image-making is political simply by the act of selection and hence exclusion but I am not campaigning for any particular point of view, except to try to see the positives and to live life to the full.
I use 645, 35mm and DX formats plus a handy little digital compact that shoots RAW files. I’ve experimented with non-lens photography - do ask!
I first worked in a monochrome/silver wet darkroom at age 7, helping my Father with scientific prints; I’ve used colour negative materials since age 21 and digital since 2005. I use Photoshop (Adobe) and Photopaint (Corel).
Brighton is London's Party Town so when the time come for Pride, Brighton council backs the event and calls it Brighton Community Pride. More than a quarter of a million people take part overall: in the parade, the music festival in the park or in the dance events on the beach and in Kemp Town. Community Pride means inclusive, everyone joins in, many of the events are family-friendly. Lots of bonhomie and slurred speaking plus a few hangovers on the train back on Sunday
Pretty though it is, you don’t want to see a double rainbow as the next thing is usually a downpour; today’s was accompanied by thunder echoing around the Meiji peaks and glaciers 2500 m. above the village of La Grave.
Two hours later, the road was dry, so time to roll. A photo-stop en route at a derelict garage: I like the photo of my new bike contrasting with this decay and riotous tagging. I think it’s about the impermanence of technology and also rebellion but I’m open to other suggested deconstructions of the image.
Finally, another “You know you’re in Marseille when...” the three scooters lining up next to you at the lights each do wheelies all the way to the next lights, and then again.
A phone call to the living: an urban cyclist pauses for a phone call amidst the gravestones of Brompton Cemetery in London. My photo from a walk with the RPS South West London group.
And thanks to Susi for helping with the photo of myself posing in the colonnades above the catacombs.
PS I’ve now been told - thanks Alan - the bike in the main photo is a “Brompton”, which just strengthens the concept of the photo!
A rich mix of traditional English garden flowers jostling with subtropical leaves: two banana trees, the neighbour’s grape vine, a tree fern and a fine spread of summer colour between, under the greengage tree in Terry’s garden in Preston Park, Brighton.
Brighton West Pier ruins’ distorted reflection in the bubble-glass doughnut-shaped gondola of the i360, the attraction which replaces it on almost the same site. Someone inside the viewing pod is also taking a picture. The West Pier has been photographed many times since was opened in 1866; its ruin became an icon of the failures of heritage planning after it was damaged by a storm in 2002 and destroyed by two successive fires in 2003. All the decking and most of the metal struts have now gone. The Brighton i360 carries up to 200 passengers to 162 m. above sea level. Here's my view of the attraction itself: Brighton i360
